A Modern Literary Glossary: Definitions for Our Ever-Changing Reading World

With the literary and publishing landscapes in near-constant states of flux, once-familiar terms have come to seem unfamiliar (saying that you’re “reading a book on your phone,” for example, would, not so long ago, have been evidence of madness). With that in mind, we offer these baseline definitions for our ever-changing reading world.

Political Autobiography: An autobiography, often released during a campaign cycle, meant to portray its author as something other than the craven, amoral, failure-prone, friendless, cash-whore shitneck that he or she actually is.

Celebrity Autobiography: A way for a given celebrity to relate fascinating, behind-the-scenes stories in the inimitable voice of his or her disgruntled freelance ghostwriter.

Young Adult (Genre): Narratives that highlight their teenage characters’ struggles with totalitarian societies, supernatural creatures, and sustaining readers’ interest over three or more installments.

Knausgård: To brood incessantly over seemingly trivial matters. (“Jim is in the study with the lights off, Knausgårding about the Celtics game.”)

Gladwell: To make a forceful, if tenuously supported, claim. (“Wait, you’re saying that Roe v. Wade led to the rise of independent hip-hop? Don’t Gladwell me, man.”)

Wuthering Heights: A method of killing any nascent interest in reading that a high-school student may have.

Go Set a Watchman: To reap an unscrupulous profit from the elderly and infirm. (“Gary sent his rich aunt a get-well card, but he’s just trying to Go Set a Watchman her.”)

Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore: A type of small business so unique and charming that Amazon.com — online purveyors of dishwashers, tube socks, and lice shampoo — is now attempting to make inroads in the market.

Library: A structure, often found in schools and municipalities, that houses rows of outdated computers, often surrounded by books.

Audiobook: A method for allowing John Lithgow to pay the taxes on his second vacation home.

Library Book: A system of delivering old receipts, ancient ketchup stains, and dry, flattened boogers from one patron to the next.

Hardcover Book: A product that encourages consumers to pay 14 extra dollars for two pieces of heavy cardboard.

Borrowed Book: An item which, when loaned to a friend or family member, will be returned as often as four percent of the time.

Epigraph: A chosen quote that appears before the first chapter of a book, generally written by a more skilled writer than the book’s actual author.

Blurb: Praise, often appearing on a book’s back cover, written in prose so purple as to distract from the fact that the blurb’s writer merely skimmed the book while watching television.

Author Photograph: A promotional image of an author, meant to portray its subject as something other than the sallow, computer-bound shut-in that he or she actually is.

Aspiring Novelist: A person often seen frowning worriedly into his or her sticker-covered laptop at any number of urban coffee shops.

Voracious Reader: A phrase meant to inform you of its speaker’s endless appetite for knowledge, learning, and being perceived as intelligent.

Internet Humorist: A person who overestimates his own propensity for humor, and is grievously enabled by the Internet’s need for cheap, disposable content.

Plans are also in the works to acquire German, Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese, Bezos said, as well as several nonstandard dialects of English™, including African-American Vernacular English, popular among the highly desirable 18-25 upscale suburban demographic.

There are times when a scathing review is simply not sufficient to combat a book’s supreme awfulness. In such cases, a critic must stand between a reader and the work of so-called literature, channeling his inner Gandalf to exclaim, “You Shall Not Pass!” And thus, while professional duty compels me to deliver judgment on the work at hand, I cannot in good conscience reveal the title, author, or any identifying details about its plot for fear that some perverse soul might be tempted to go out and buy it.
As I will not name the actual title, I can only say that a fitter one for this protracted sin against the English language would be Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here, though equating Dante’s Hell to this rot seems unjust to the former. Let’s go with Caveat Emptor then, which conveys the same message while sparing all authors, living or dead, any possible guilt by association.
To claim that this novelist is the worst writer of his or her generation would provide a clue as to his or her age, so to be safe, I’ll merely say that he or she -- henceforth referred to with the gender-neutral pronoun ou -- can be justifiably classified as one of the worst writers of all time. Take it from me that the author bio and photo are exactly the sort one would expect from a person who would produce a book of this sort (or show up horribly late, and without a gift, to a junior colleague’s housewarming party).
The novel -- for it may be loosely described as such -- costs between $25 and $30, is set in a type similar to, but markedly different from, Bembo and boasts of handsome deckled edges. (But perhaps I’ve said too much.) The epigraph, written by a Greek who lived between 500-100 BC, is poorly chosen; the chapters are at once overlong and rushed; and though I won’t divulge whether it’s narrated in first, second or third person, I will say that the choice is precisely the wrong one to meet the demands of the plot I will soon adumbrate with specific vagueness (that is, in exactly the same style with which the author responded to a former friend’s wedding invitation).
Caveat Emptor is a kind of shaggy dog story in dialog with a well-known masterpiece from the Western Canon. It begins with a shocking thing happening to a nondescript man. After this explosive occurrence, a series of other things proceed to happen with depressing predictability. Meanwhile, other characters do things to themselves and to others before everything culminates in one big anti-climactic event that nonetheless changes things forever. A more competent author (and indeed a more considerate human being) would surely have ordered things differently and dug deeper into the various political, social and economic implications so clearly lurking in every twist and turn I’ve outlined above.
There is great narrative energy in the set-up, and indeed it is a shame that a plot with so much potential sprang from the head of an author ill-equipped to write a shopping list (let alone to savagely review the first volume of a Neoplatonist mystery series, Inspector Plotinus Materializes, penned by an aspiring novelist, junior colleague, and former friend).
As for Caveat Emptor’s characters, they are either clumsy mouthpieces or ciphers lacking any animating detail. What was that one guy’s motivation to do this or that? Beats me, and I suspect ou had no idea either. The protagonist remains especially blank, and the portrait of a talking camel named Jacques is not convincing in the least. (Now I’ve definitely said too much.)
Invective aside, I am not a petty man. Therefore, in the spirit of critical fairness, I freely grant that the author has devised a worthy MacGuffin, so worthy in fact that I wouldn’t be surprised if the memorable name of this work’s particular MacGuffin eventually supplants Hitchcock’s term in the cultural discourse. Moreover, there are, I admit, some titillating if rather outré sex scenes. (Readers interested in that kind of thing should email me for the details, which I happen to know are autobiographical in nature.)
But enough crumb throwing, which ultimately patronizes rather than placates. Should this text for some reason ever be taught in schools, teachers would well advised to issue a general trigger warning, not for the traumatic event that occurs between the first and last sections, but rather for the book’s execrable prose. The writing here displays that distinctive je ne sais quoi that has made the author an international phenomenon: a certain quiddity that, depending on one’s taste, is deemed to be either a captivatingly peculiar essence or a nauseating distillate of a heavily mannered whatness. (It reeks of ordure to me, but then again ou has long since stopped returning my phone calls, so what do I know?)
Solecisms and mixed metaphors abound, examples of which I cannot give because such lazy writing is the author’s most recognizable stylistic marker, and these lapses are nothing if not unique. However, as clichés are shared by a community of hacks, it won’t give much away to note that ou has assembled quite the collection of lovers with their heads over their heels, romantics wearing their hearts on their sleeves, and Priapics with their quivering members pointing true north.
Some might argue that I am abdicating my critical responsibility in withholding so much; others that there is something chillingly totalitarian in my suppressive efforts; still others that I am smarting from the author’s libelous portrait of me in a previous best-selling novel. Valid criticisms all, but I stand fast in my conviction that some works are so aesthetically offensive that they are almost like the videotape in The Ring, capable of transmitting a fatal curse to unsuspecting bibliophiles. Identifying this book by name thus constitutes a violation of that Hippocratic oath sacred to doctors and critics alike: First do no harm.
Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly included the name of the protagonist. We apologize and kindly ask readers to forget that his or her name was “John.”
Image Credit: Flickr/Sarah E Luke

Ambrose Bierce is grasping his bony rib cage and howling soundlessly with laughter. A hearty assent to “Go Set A Watchman.” However, I dissent on “Library Book,” which all know is primarily a carrier system for throw-up crust, cracker crumbs, and chicken soup stains.

We are leaving for Chicago very soon, and with no place to live as of yet, I do not know when I will be blogging again... not for a couple of weeks, probably. So, I will leave you with something, though not book-related in any way, that you may find quite useful:One of my favorite beverages is the Bloody Mary: vodka and spicy, peppery tomato juice poured over some ice cubes and garnished with celery and maybe a wedge of lime. It kind of makes you thirsty just thinking about it, doesn't it? Me too. It reminds me of college, in fact. At the University of Virginia daytime cocktail parties (especially on football weekends) are a mainstay. It was at these parties where I discovered my taste for the Bloody Mary. I also discovered that of the many adult beverages available to us, the Bloody Mary is one of the few that can't just be consumed anywhere, at any time. You will look silly if you order a Bloody Mary at your local pub on a Friday night and you probably won't enjoy it very much either. The peculiar thing about the Bloody Mary is that there is most certainly a time and place for them. Over the years, I set out to determine exactly what those times and places are. If you have been nearby while I've been drinking a Bloody Mary, you have probably heard my set of rules. Still, I worry that I might forget them one day, so I've decided to immortality them in this here blog. I submit now, for your consideration, The Bloody Mary Rules. Enjoy!The Rule of Thumb: No matter where you are, you may drink as many Bloody Marys as you like between dawn and noon. After noon, you may have Bloody Mary as your first drink of the day, but afterwards you must move on to other adult beverages. After sunset, you may not drink any Blood Marys.The Codicils (Or exceptions to The Rule of Thumb, if you like. At any rate, this is where things get interesting): Irrespective of the time of day, you MAY drink Bloody Marys (as many as you like):1. On airplanes1a. At the airport bar, but ONLY if your plane has been delayed2. At wedding receptions3. At horse races4. While bowling5. And, finally, on boats

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold and the ditch he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Not in a weird way. The nights dark beyond all reckoning of darkness, days endless gray. He rose from the reeking sleeprags and looked towards the east for a hint of light. Long ago snuffed by lowhanging dust, crusted and festering whoremouth. In the dream from which he’d wakened he and the child had wandered in a cave, scrounging for rotted batmeat. Shadows playing the walls like clownpuppets, the whitegloved fingers gnarled and ginshaken. Encircled by the dim, an abattoir lullaby. They came to a great stone room within which lay a longdead lake, its water stagnant and foul. And on the far shore a eunuch mime, naked save for a filthy gray cravat. Dead eyes milky and hollow. With a thin straw to its dirtscarred lips, it knelt, sipping from the brack. It heard their steps, craning its mimeneck to see what it could not. Skin translucent, ribs charbling and swortled, the heart beating tiredly. Facepaint smeared. It waved sadly in their direction, for it could not speak. Then it scuttled into the inky blackness. The man shook his head in the freezing predawn. No more peaches before bed.
With the first gray light he rose and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Godless and blasted. A madman’s timeshare. The trees dead, the grass dead, the shrubs dead also. The rivers dead. And the streams and reeds, the mosses and voles. Dead as well. He glassed the ruins, hoping for a shred of color, a wisp of smoke, a faroff Cracker Barrel. There was nothing but swirling gloom, a grasping murk. He sat with the binoculars and the gray, and thought: the child is my warrant. If he is not the word of God God never spoke, although he might have scribbled something on a paperscrap and passed it along. He bit hard on his blistered upperlip. If only I had thought to give him a name. If only.
An hour later they were on The Road, an Oprah’s Book Club selection. He pushed the cart and both he and the boy carried knapsacks in case they had to make a run for it. Cannibal rapists, roving bloodcults. Greenpeace volunteers. In the knapsacks were essential things: tins of food, metal utensils, a broken Slinky, a canopener, three bullets, a picture of ham. He looked out over the barren waste, the scorpled remain. The road was empty, as was its wont. Quiet, moveless. Are you okay? he said, quotation marks dead as the reeds. The boy nodded. Then they started down the road, humming a sprightly tune. The tune was silent, and unsprightly.
In time they had arrived at a roadside filling station. It was still and precise, a blaggard’s assbath. Ashcovered and freighted with doubt. They stood in the road and studied it. The windows were unbroken, the pumps intact. I think we should check it out, the man said. There might be snacks. Cheez-Its, maybe. The boy looked on as he entered an open door. The man, not the boy. Nothing in the service bay save for a standing metal toolbox, a trash-filled wastecan. Waterlogged tittymagazines. In the small office, ash and dust, soot and flumb. A cashregister, a telephonebook, a metal desk. He crossed to the desk, standing over the phone. He picked it up and punched at the numbers. Three three three, three three three, three three five three three. The boy stood at the door. What are you doing? he said. The man hung up the phone. Jingle Bells, the man said.
In the service bay he tipped over the trashdrum and sorted through the plastic oilbottles. Then they sat in the floor decanting them of their dregs, standing the bottles upside down to drain into a pan. This reminds me of ketchup, the man said as he watched the slowdraining oil. The boy brightened. Can you tell me about ketchup, Papa? the boy said. Please tell me. The man stared, remembering another world entire, a world of jellies and mustards, of condiments boundless. Perhaps later, he said. I’ll tell you about ketchup later. The boy watched the slowing oildrip, chin in his hand. Okay.
On the far side of the valley the road passed through a fearsome charswath. Blackened and limbless trees, ashblown and dead. On a distant rise, the heatscorched ruins of a farmhouse. Tilted roadside lightpoles. Faded billboards advertising motels, the use of irony. An abandoned Vespa. Are you having fun? he said. The boy hesitated, shook his head. Are you sure? Yes, the boy said. I’m sure. The man looked out over the blasted land, the pebblestrewn waste. Impressions? the man said. The boy kicked at a small black rock. No, said the boy. The man’s heart ached. The boy used to love his impressions.
That night they lay beneath their filthy plastic tarp as rain fell from a godless heaven. After stowing the cart in a jagged roadside scarp, they had found a spot a good distance from the road. A thick copse of deadburnt spruce. The dirt underhead was hard, and with the wind and the cold and the running viscous ash it was difficult to sleep. Can I ask you a question? the boy said after a time, his teeth chattering.
Yes. Of course.
Are we going to die?
Sometime. Not now.
Okay. Tomorrow maybe?
No. Not tomorrow. Not for a long, long time.
Oh. Why not?
Because we’re going to be okay.
The boy considered this. Okay, he said.
There was silence for a time. Then the boy spoke again. But could we maybe die the day after?
No. I will protect you. No matter what.
Okay. The boy paused. But what if we did? Or maybe just me? Could I maybe die?
The man laughed into the tarpgrit as thunder pealed across the wet, bleakened valley. And leave all this? he said.
See Also:Part 2, 3, 4, 5